


a lifetime of wondering

by fleetingblossom



Category: Hakuouki
Genre: F/M, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-28
Updated: 2014-03-28
Packaged: 2018-01-17 07:31:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1379203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fleetingblossom/pseuds/fleetingblossom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He was happy without a monster like her, who didn’t look a day older than she was in 1864.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a lifetime of wondering

**Author's Note:**

> Written in 2012.

> _Across the park. A stolen glance. A lifetime of wondering if I’d ever see you again._

She thought they would be happy, the two of them and their child, soon to be children. She rests her hand against the curve of her stomach, head resting against his arm, and she thinks, _Is it okay for me to be this happy?_ He reaches to stroke her hair, instinctively to comfort her, looking very much like a man in love. “What should we name her?”

“Mou! Sanosuke, the child hasn’t been born yet, and you’ve already decided that the child should be a girl?” The love of her life lifts his eyebrows, laughing and intertwining their fingers. This happiness, she could stay here forever, basking in the warm of the sun, loving, being loved. This quiet, quiet life that was miles away from the life they had left behind.

He closes his eyes briefly, the cat’s grin never leaving his face. “A girl would be nice, she can have your smile and my eyes, and our son would have someone to protect. She can be as beautiful as you are and I can love her almost as much.” She reaches up to kiss him, and the happiness is so great she feared her chest would cave in.

This happiness in her chest was not allowed to stay.

Time stopped at a standstill for her even as her children grew older, even as the love of her life began to fade, she didn’t seem to be a day older than the day they had met. _Don’t worry, I love you_ , he would say, but the smile grew increasingly fearful—of one day not being able to be with her, of one day losing her when she remained the same, of one day leaving her behind.

And he does, too soon even for a human to leave. It comes swift, the disease taking him before age did, and he was gone before she could hold onto him one last time. “I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you so much. We will surely be together in the next life,” he whispers, voice faint, against her ear, kisses against her hair.

He was always like this, putting her front of himself, even when he was dying and there was nothing she could do but hope that there was such thing as a next life. But how long would she have to wait for this next life? Ten years? Twenty years? Fifty? A hundred?

Harada Sanosuke passed away spring of 1884, twenty years after he had met his wife, Yukimura Chizuru. He was buried under a large oak tree, cried over by the widow he left behind and his two beautiful, beautiful children.

Ten years from then, Yukimura Chizuru returned to Japan, finding it far too painful to remain in a place where everything she saw, every breath she took reminded her of the man she was still searching for in crowds. Sometimes, her two beautiful, beautiful children wrote letters to her.

She waited another ten years only to see him holding the hand of another woman. It is January of 1904 and Japan is beautiful and a month away from the first great war of the twentieth century. Many things had changed since 1864.

She was not one of them.

He looked happy. He looked _young_ , no more than a boy of eighteen years, walking next to a girl who was not a day older than sixteen. They looked happy and human. Only the magnetic pull pushed her towards them, unable to tear her eyes away from the face of the man she had been in love with all these decades.

“Who are you looking at?” the girl teased in a sweet voice, though the worry in her eyes was apparent. She hadn’t even noticed that this boy of eighteen—she could only wonder if his name was still Sanosuke—was staring back at her, his face as though he had seen a ghost.

He was happy. He was human. He was happy. She could not tear that bit of happiness away from him just for her own selfish needs, even as the millions of times he reached to touch her danced behind her eyelids, even as her skin ached for him and her heart cried.

He was happy without a monster like her, who didn’t look a day older than she was in 1864. Even as he called after her, she disappeared into the crowd, fearing that she would continue to haunt his dreams the way he haunted hers.

It would continue to come back to her, this encounter with the man she loved, loves, who looked so young and whole she couldn’t bear to wretch him away from it all. Instead, she chose to let him pine over the lingering ghost of a woman he thought he knew but had never seen before, to fall in love with a shadow and wither away the way she was.

He must have died young once more, for it is 1939 when they meet again, the first time he had touched her in such a long time she spent most of it sobbing into his chest. “I feel like I’ve been waiting for you all my life,” he wipes the tears from her eyes as he kisses life into her, their teeth and tongues clashing in something far more animalistic and desperate.

They had met each other on accident, on purpose, and he grabbed a hold of her, asking if they had met somewhere before. He was a bit older than the boy of eighteen years, rougher around the edges, wisdom beyond his years, looking at her like a man in love. “Come with me.” He takes her hand in his.

The sheets tangle in their legs in a way that reminded her of the first time, his breathing steady and his heart close, the air cold so they only came closer to each other. It had been more than fifty years, half a century, since he had touched her the way he did now, the way that made the universes collide with one another and her vision cloud over, her chest so full it could burst.

This happiness in her chest was not allowed to stay.

He pressed a kiss against her hair the way he always did, instinctively. “There is going to be a war, but I’ll come back to you. Wait for me,” her heart ached at the thought of being torn away form him again, this happiness ripped away from her again, “We’ll get married and live in a small house and we can be happy.” He had not known her for more than a day, but it had already felt like a lifetime.

“I can kiss you every morning and hold you every night. We can drink tea in the afternoons and watch the sky fade in the evenings,” these words murmured against her ear seemed so tangible she could have reached to take them, a string of pearls so precious she would hold them close to her heart.

But despite the reassurances, he did not come back for her. What returned was only a picture of them standing stiffly next to each other, taken by a photographer by a river and a letter penned hastily. _I love you, I love you, I love you, we will surely be together in the next life. I will surely wait another lifetime to see you again._

But how long would she have to wait this time, to see him again? Ten years? Twenty years? Fifty? A hundred? Would she spend another lifetime searching the crowds for his face and his smile, in search of the happiness that had been ripped away from her so abruptly?

How long could she bear it, wandering the earth as a ghost who could not die, clinging onto the hope that she would find the traces of a memory that would die? Even if she found him, how long would he stay? How long would she have to live before she could die with him?

Some years later, she meets the man named Kazama Chikage again, who is every bit as menacing as she remembered him to be. He hadn’t changed since she last saw him. “I am looking for a way to die,” she says to him, head lowered in defeat. “I hope that you can help me.”

Kazama hesitated, and she can see the dilemma in his eyes. The last of the Yukimura clan, a female, whose worth exceeded even his own, the matriarch of her clan, bowing her head to him and asking to die. Would he have had the child he wanted by now? Did he still require her?

He was the only one who could kill her—she did not have enough courage to do so herself, no matter how much she wished to. “Please.” He looks at her, and draws the sword at his side, the steel glinting as he presses it against her chest, gentle.

“Sen misses you. She still talks about you sometimes.” It comes so quick she doesn’t quite have time to think, feeling as though she were watching her own death even as it happened. The blade slides into her chest quick and leaves just as easily, Kazama’s gaze never leaving her own—almost apologetic, almost.

“I hope you find him.”

And she as crumples the world is spinning a bright shade of blood and the silver of Kazama’s sword. _I love you, I love you, I love you, I’ve waited two hundred years to see you again. We will surely be together this time, in another life. I love you. Wait for me._

—

“We have a new transfer student today, her name is Yukimura Chizuru, please treat her well.” Harada Sanosuke looked up from his seat as the teacher introduced this girl—she came from Tokyo to Kyoto because of her father. She wasn’t particularly pretty, one might even call her plain, almost, but he could not tear his eyes away from her.

_I love you, I love you, I love you. I have waited many lifetimes to be able to love you again._


End file.
